In Copenhagen we like to be proud of cycling. The municipality even claims to be a city of bikes. For good reason too, neither our royal family, nor anything else consistently promotes Copenhagen as effectively these years, as our bicycle culture.
The bicycle culture portrays Copenhagen as a modern sustainable capital, a family-friendly environment, equally inviting to students and a workforce of resources, a profitable population it would seem. Specifically because families with small children, in the last decade, have almost stopped migrating to the ´burbs the city economy is better than ever. And, I would argue, has a more healthy demographic. A capital should attract citizens in all stages of life.
Yet the city has for sixty years been developed to favour cars, more than any other mode of transportation. A development which continues when the city reprioritises sidewalks and cycling lanes in favour of more car-parking. When the city uses 2-3 times as much money annually on new car parking, than on improving city space for cyclists, runners, and pedestrians.
Planning for even small parts of the city to be car-free is considered as likely as expanding the city to planet Mars. In a city, where only 20% own a car I suspect there would be a market for developments entirely dependent on public and active modes of transportation (bikes, walking and running).
“The cars must be allowed” as the dominating party, the Social Democrats, like to trumpet. Ask them why, and they will reply something like “because people drive in them”. The rhetoric is well thought out. I suspect the car represents the rise of the worker to a level equal to the bourgeoisie. A symbol they can´t leave behind despitethe climate crisis, oil-dependency, thousands killed annually by accidents and pollution, ten thousands more suffering from chronic illnesses.
In most cities, space is a scarce resource, and the closer you get to the city centers, square-feet value keeps appreciating.
Cars are poison in such an equation (unless you own a lot of land). A car demands as much as five parking spaces in the US according to UCLA planning professor Donald Shoup. A study at University of Purdue - "in a midsize Midwestern county; they found that parking spaces outnumbered resident drivers 3-to-1 and resident families 11-to-1” perfectly in line with Professor Shoup's findings, as well as those of Todd Littmann of Canadian Victoria Transport Policy Institute.
I have not been able to identify any such Danish studies, and the municipality does not register parking spaces outside the paid parking zones or even total number of parking spaces in connection with new developments. But the city statistics shows 20% have a car, almost 100% have a bike, car-parking outnumbers bike rack spaces 2.5 to 1. Though a parking space for a car provides space for 8-16 bikes, and despite car parking is up to 1600 times as expensive. Still the city will invest much more in car parking every year than they have historically have ever used on bike racks.
Parking is central to the concept of the car, as it spends maybe 22 hours a day being parked. But even when it does drive, it is incredibly ineffective in the city space. In a given amount of time and space, you can move 5-7 seven times as many people by foot or on a bike, than in a car. Busses and light rail are even more effective. If you have a two lane road (in each direction) with one lane dedicated for light rail and one lane for bikes and pedestrians, and wanted the same traffic capacity for cars, you would need some 20 lanes in each direction. It seems to me that it must be evident for anyone who cares to consider the facts, that cars can not be a prioritized part of the traffic mix in any city.
Copenhagenize the planet. And have a lovely day.![]()
